Cartridges of what is generically referred to as "caulking" are ubiquitous in our culture, particularly in the construction trade and in the home repair and restoration avocations. The contained product is generally a thick plastic material which may be squeezed or expelled from the cartridge at one end through a tubular dispenser tip, by pushing in a piston on the opposite end. Beside what more technically would be called caulking, such cartridges are used to contain and dispense various glues, adhesives, settable or curable plastic resin compositions and the like, all in pure form or as compounded with usual binders, extenders, preservatives, thickening agents, solvents, plasticizers, colorants, masking agents, dispersants and the like. Other products such as cake frosting, art and craft supplies and the like are or may be similarly contained and dispensed. "Caulking" as used herein is meant to refer to any and all of these products, and "viscous plastic material" is used as an equally generic synonym.
One way such cartridges are used is as replaceable mates for the familiar receivers which have trigger-actuated ratchet-advanced plungers which abut the cartridges' pistons and push them forwards. These are referred to herein as cartridges or containers of the "push-in piston type".
Another way such cartridges are used is to provide the rear end of the cartridge body with its own twistable actuator, connected via a lead screw which sealingly projects through a cartridge rear end wall, with a non-rotating piston within the cartridge. When the actuator is twisted the lead screw turns and advances the piston. Such a container is shown and described in my earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,144,988, issued Mar. 20, 1979.
In my copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15,304 filed Feb. 26, 1979, I have shown and described a dispenser actuating chuck adapter for mating twistable actuator-provided dispensing containers, e.g. of the type shown and described in my aforesaid earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,144,988, with a rotary power hand tool, e.g. an electric drill.
I continue to believe the rotary chuck adapter as described in my aforesaid copending U.S. patent application is very useful. However, in the form that product has heretofore been provided, it was not suitable for adapting rotary power tools for dispensing cartridge of the first above-mentioned push-in piston-type cartridge. It is clear that such cartridges will continue to have a substantial portion of the market for caulking dispensers and that such users so far appear to have been deprived of a way to power-dispense caulking from push-in piston-type containers.